Battery Fires Are Making Electric Cars and Bikes Look Bad

A sober look at the problem reveals less of one than hysterical headlines suggest, and some technological answers that make EVs and other vehicles far safer than gas-powered ones.

[JensSchraeder]

Gasoline car fires don’t require 20, 000 gallons of water to put out unlike an EV. Not to mention that they don’t spontaneously combust. EVs also emit way more toxic chemicals when burning than ICE cars

[neilburns]

There's a YouTube video of an electric bus in Paris, where the battery on the roof of the vehicle had caught fire and it's really quite scary just how quickly the fire spreads and engulfs the whole vehicle.

[stavrosk.]

I have known a case here in Belgium where dure fighters had to put a burning electric car in a water bassin because it kept re-igniting

[TheFrenchPug]

I have a friend that is a fireman. He said all they can do is let the car burn and try tons of water.

[TubeSkaterRudy]

LFP batteries are almost impossible to catch fire, the only downsite is they have 25 percent less capacity for the same weight, but there are more promising versions in development.

[forrestp]

The local news has stopped paying attention to car fires, it's not even low-hanging fruit on a slow news day.

[edvoon]

Ironic that the fire department training uses a Nissan LEAF as the test vehicle, given that LEAFs, despite their well known battery issues, are in fact not known to have fire issues. It is rare for a Nissan LEAF to catch fire unless it was deliberately induced. They probably used it because old LEAFs also happen to be the cheapest EVs around.

[zunedog]

Anyone remember the GTA mod that turned the sticky bombs into Galaxy Note 7s?

[DCuerpoJr]

I work in a city fire department and we rarely see electric vehicle fires. Though it typically happens after a collision that compromises the battery.

Electric bike and scooter fires have become exponentially more frequent because 1) people charge them inside their homes often next to other combustible materials, 2) people don’t check to see if the battery has physical damage, 3) they park them in areas that block escape routes, 4) using a cheap 3rd party battery or charger and 5) lithium ion battery fires burn way faster than normal household items. They can become out of control within 30 seconds and don’t trigger smoke alarms.

[namvet_e]

Good video, but it misses one troubling attribute of the EV and that is the number of cells in an EV battery pack. You may remember that in 2016 the Samsung company did a recall of all the Note cellphones due to fire risk in their batteries. I never saw any report of how likely (in fire incident per hour of use) for that product but that cell phone probably was similar to others in having a single cell in the battery. The typical EV has anywhere from about 2500 to over 12000 cells in its battery pack. That mean the risk of fire in an EV battery pack is many thousands of times more likely than the risk of fire from a cellphone, laptop computer, tablet or other device. When this probability of a fire is combined with the almost certainty that a cell fire in an EV battery pack will rapidly cascade through all the cells in the battery pack then it becomes clear that the EV is a very serious fire risk whether on the road or just parked. Ask yourself how quickly you can safely get an EV parked and evacuate all the passengers. If an EV spontaneously ignited in your garage, while you are asleep in bed, would you survive? The fact these devices are currently promoted by government policy and the fire risk ignored appears to be criminally negligent. When the number of EV fires are compared to the number of ICE vehicle fires remember that there are many, many times the number if ICE vehicles with an enormous range of age and maintenance state and many ICE vehicle fires are intentionally started in criminal acts to remove evidence after they have been stolen. The Dept of Transportation needs to make fire risk analysis a criteria for evaluation of the safety of the EV.

[dbronze]

Imagine, what was said about the early gasoline automobiles. I'm sure people were saying, I'll never stop riding horses.

[johnhigdon]

We can't have EVs look bad, now can we?

[HoverLambo]

Its also down to the fact they store energy, all things being equal, the more energy stored the greater the fire hazard. And modern batteries are far more energy dense than old lead-acid batteries.

[LFTRnow]

It will be interesting to see the Sodium-Ion batteries come out. They will be vastly cheaper to manufacture and require no lithium. How well their safety pans out though will be interesting to see. It probably will need a few years of redesigning to get it right, just as the Lithium ones have.

[KILLKING]

one of the potential hazards of a EV fire is cobalt exposure as when they burn the cobalt goes airborne and is highly toxic and can disable you if you are exposed to high enough levels of cobalt

[funhouse]

Internal combustion engine gasoline fire is out when you’re driving on the road, not when your gasoline car is parked in your garage, these EV fires are occurring at home in the garage or in the apartment building, catching the apartment on fire, or the home on fire and killing people

[davidmacesr]

Thanks for your very well done information on very important matters such as this one. 🖖

[XalenMaru]

Good old 2016. An explosive vape pen in one pocket and a flammable Galaxy 7 in the other.

[surfntrucks]

0:03 Brian says "long rang cars." and the editor shows a Prius.🤣

[xzibito]

You can extinguish an ICE vehicle, while an EV cant be extinguished and the vehicle needs to be parked in an open field for weeks or submerged in water for a long period of time.